Ringgit climbs against greenback early Monday

KUALA LUMPUR: The ringgit opened higher against the US dollar on Monday amid continuous weakness in the greenback, a dealer said. At 9am, the ringgit stood at 3.8860/8910 against the greenback from Thursday’s close of 3.8910/8980. OANDA Corp head of trading for Asia Pacific Stephen Innes said with the US interest rate to foreign exchange correlation broken, the US dollar continued to sell off despite US dollar bond yields pushing higher.

However, he said with markets still suffering the hangover effect from the Chinese Lunar New Year, a plethora of US Federal Reserve speak along with the Federal Open Market Committee minutes, is likely to cause an uptick in volatility this week
Against a basket of major currencies, the ringgit traded higher. It rose against the Singapore dollar to 2.9628/9673 from 2.9659/9724 on Thursday and strengthened against the Japanese yen to 3.6557/6611 from last week’s 3.6559/6635. The ringgit appreciated versus the British pound to 5.4556/4634 from 5.4704/4818 and firmed vis-a-vis the euro to 4.8272/8338 from 4.8583/8678. – STAR